Friday Practice Report

VandyMania Staff

03/22/2002

Practice started at 4:15. It was another cold day for a spring practice. Today only one gold jersey was awarded, Justin Geisinger was rewarded for
his work in Thursday's practice. Today's practice was one of the better attended practices, there were several players' parents in the stands due to Parent's Weekend at Vanderbilt.

Practice started with individual group work,
before
moving on to introducing new pass plays. Then while the QBs, RBs, WRs,
and
TEs worked against the LBs and secondary, the offensive and defensive
lines
went head to head.

Jay and Benji both threw good passes during the
drill,
M.J., Jerrin Holt, and Ryan Cuffee all made good catches. For the
battle of
the trenches, done one player at a time, Robert Dinwiddie was the star
of the
defensive line and Jamie Byrum was the O-line's best. The defensive
line
coach yelled at one point, "We haven't beat Jamie all spring!"

Next
practice
went to full team passing plays, then special teams work for 10-15
minutes.
Finally, practice ended with a 30 minute scrimmage. The defense was
repeatedly told to keep the offense up and not tackle, so this made the
offense look pretty good. Jay Cutler had a 20-25 yard run on the option
where
he wasn't touched until he was well down field. Ian Gaines had some
hard runs
where he fought his way through defenders for several yards. The play
of the
scrimmage belonged to senior walk-on Juan Rojas. Rojas took a handoff
up the
middle over 60 yards for a touchdown, leading to the offensive sideline
erupting in celebration.

Several players wore red jerseys today, Jim May has worn red all
spring,
others with red for the first time were: Benji Walker, Hunter
Hillenmeyer,
and
Aaron Carter.

Saturday's practice/scrimmage starts at 9:30 AM and is open to the public.